Excerpt: “There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes
Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they
want him. This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s
being interpreted, for now, as an inter-Christian skirmish may eventually be
remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front – not
against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and
impressive foe.”

Article 18: International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
1981 U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of
Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.

1. 1Everyone shall have the
right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include
freedom to have a religion or whatever belief of his choice, and freedom,
either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to
manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practices and teaching.

1. 2. No one shall be subject to
coercion which would impair his freedom to have a religion or belief of his
choice.

1. 3Freedom to manifest one’s
religion or belief may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by
law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, morals or the
fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

Benedict’s Gambit

By ROSS
DOUTHAT

The Church of England has
survived the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Elton John performing
“Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s Westminster
Abbey funeral. So it will probably survive the
note the Vatican
issued last week, inviting disaffected Anglicans to head Romeward, and offering
them an Anglo-Catholic mansion within the walls of the Roman Catholic faith.

But the invitation is a
bombshell nonetheless. Pope Benedict XVI’s outreach to Anglicans may produce
only a few conversions; it may produce a few million. Either way, it represents
an unusual effort at targeted proselytism, remarkable both for its concessions
to potential converts — married priests, a self-contained institutional
structure, an Anglican rite — and for its indifference to the wishes of the
Church of England’s leadership.

This is not the way well-mannered
modern churches are supposed to behave. Spurred by the optimism of the early
1960s, the major denominations of Western Christendom have spent half a century
being exquisitely polite to one another, setting aside a history of strife in
the name of greater Christian unity.

This ecumenical era has
borne real theological fruit, especially on issues that divided
Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation. But what began as a
daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency — a dull round of
interdenominational statements on global warming and Third
World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel.

At the same time, the more
ecumenically minded denominations have lost believers to more assertive faiths
— Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Mormonism and even Islam — or seen them drift
into agnosticism and apathy.

Nobody is more aware of
this erosion than Benedict. So the pope is going back to basics — touting the
particular witness of Catholicism even when he’s addressing universal subjects,
and seeking converts more than common ground.

Along the way, he’s
courting both ends of the theological spectrum. In his encyclicals, Benedict
has addressed a range of issues — social justice, environmental protection, even
erotic love — that are close to the hearts of secular liberals and
lukewarm, progressive-minded Christians. But instead of stopping at a place of
broad agreement, he has pushed further, trying to persuade his more liberal
readers that many of their beliefs actually depend on the West’s Catholic
heritage, and make sense only when grounded in a serious religious faith.

At the same time, the pope
has systematically lowered the barriers for conservative Christians hovering on
the threshold of the church, unsure whether to slip inside. This was the
purpose behind his controversial outreach to schismatic Latin Mass Catholics,
and it explains the current opening to Anglicans.

Many Anglicans will never
become Catholic; their theology is too evangelical, their suspicion of papal
authority too ingrained, their objections to the veneration of the Virgin Mary
too deeply felt. But for those who could, Benedict is trying to make reunion
with Rome a
flesh-and-blood possibility, rather than a matter for academic conversation.

The news media have
portrayed this rightward outreach largely through the lens of culture-war
politics — as an attempt to consolidate, inside the Catholic tent, anyone who
joins the Vatican
in rejecting female priests and gay marriage.

But in making the opening
to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the
parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but
Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.

Here Catholicism and
Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both
are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim
population. In Africa, increasingly the real
heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence
across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.

Where the European
encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a
controversial 2006 address
in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly
challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and
sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the
world.

By contrast, the Church of
England’s leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement),
with the Archbishop of Canterbury
going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law
in Britain.

There are an awful lot of
Anglicans, in England
and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader
who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one,
if they want him.

This could be the real
significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as
an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step
toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism,
but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.

United Nations Secretary
General Ban Ki Moon, at the Alliance of Civilizations Madrid Forum said; “never
in our lifetime has there been a more desperate need for constructive and
committed dialogue, among individuals, among communities, among cultures, among
and between nations.”

Genuine dialogue on human
rights and freedom of religion or belief calls for respectful discourse,
discussion of taboos and clarity by persons of diverse beliefs. Inclusive
dialogue includes people of theistic, non-theistic and
atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief.
The warning signs are clear, unless there is genuine dialogue ranging from
religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism; conflicts in the future will
probably be even more deadly.

In 1968 the UN deferred
work on an International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Religious Intolerance because of its complexity and sensitivity. Violence,
suffering and discrimination based on religion or belief in many parts of the
world is greater than ever. It is time for
a UN Working Group to draft what they deferred in 1968, a comprehensive core
international human rights treaty-a United Nations Convention on Freedom of
Religion or Belief. United
Nations History – Freedom of Religion or Belief

The challenge to
religions or beliefs at all levels is awareness, understanding
and acceptance of international human rights standards on freedom of
religion or belief. Leaders, teachers and followers of all religions or
beliefs, with governments, are keys to test the viability of inclusive and
genuine dialogue in response to the UN Secretary General’s urgent call for
constructive and committed dialogue.

The Tandem Project title,
Separation of Religion or Belief and State (SOROBAS), reflects the far-reaching scope of UN
General Comment 22 on Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, Human Rights Committee (CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4). The General Comment on
Article 18 is a guide to international human rights law for peaceful
cooperation, respectful competition and resolution of conflicts:

Surely one of the best
hopes for humankind is to embrace a culture in which religions and other
beliefs accept one another, in which wars and violence are not tolerated in the
name of an exclusive right to truth, in which children are raised to solve
conflicts with mediation, compassion and understanding.

The Tandem Project is a non-governmental organization (NGO)
founded in 1986 to build understanding, tolerance and respect for diversity,
and to prevent discrimination in matters relating to freedom of religion or
belief. The Tandem Project has sponsored multiple conferences, curricula,
reference materials and programs on Article 18 of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights – Everyone shall have the right to freedom of
thought, conscience and religion - and 1981 United Nations Declaration on the
Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or
Belief.

The Tandem Project is a UN NGO in
Special Consultative Status with the